Don't we all feel the need occasionally to step outside upon the stoop, on the garden's edge and call out to the other? I know I do. For some reason on certain days I feel more alone, isolated on this planet. Perhaps it's the memory of a loss that I never fully recovered from but had to go on, none-the-less, across a bridge, beyond the field, behind the wall and finally in to the garden.
After this bit below, I've including the poem that someone posted to the artnews list serve.
When I read this poem I immediately feel connected to my fellow human and not in an abstract way, but instead I feel a very specific akin to suffering's cavernous locality that bring together young-old, rich-poor, sick-well, cowardly-courageous. We've all sauntered there.
I am the Indian on the road. The sun's dry heat seeps through my poncho; bleaching it a further shade of white; beating down what's left of the spirit; knowing this fallen man's plan like the back of my hand. I have plans too. All too often they've been shoved or pushed aside for a lover's plans. Haven't you done this? Maybe it's the landscape that tackles my mind in the poem, I'm crumpled, and only hear muffled church bells' tones for my troubles push me toward turf; for, this is a poem of the land. A road. He's traveling. I'm traveling. He's on foot. I'm on foot... bare, such as it is, in the (the land between here and there) dolomite soil. I look to my right (I am heading west) and the field of wildflowers, grasses swish an arid wind's cheek. The Land is what remains and It is what connects us. To be Human comes from the humus of the Earth, after all. It's the salt of the Earth; I'm fascinated with the salts. They're clingy and the variety of salts boggles my mind. A salt farmer rakes water's solids to the berm on the side of a road in France. The salt has been this way for hundreds years, it's a way of life around enriching foods' flavors, some may say making life worth living. I've tasted a floral after taste with this salt. Like the old Indian on the road, Culture moves toward extinction but for this we have stone memorials, don't we? But is that enough? "WHY DO I HAVE TO BE CONNECTED TO THAT POOR MAN ON THE ROAD? WHITE EYES LOOKING AT ME? I OFFERED YOU AN APPLE! ISN'T THAT ENOUGH? WHY CAN'T I JUST DRIFT, BACK INTO MY CAVE? WITH ITS COLD ROCK FLOOR BENEATH MY FEET. I MEAN, WHY DO I CARE ABOUT HIM?" Isn't it the Earth, that's the answer. The soil. In the middle of a work day, 'flipping' about my Inbox between blog posts, my bookmarks, an unexpected reminder, my link to my fellow human reads true in the second stanza. I am called to action. As I drift off I smell the memory of a country I've only visited in books. I look through the window of a great manor house I've never owned. It's a view of a garden beyond the green rolling hills. 'Look!' I'm there in the field making an angel in the wheat.
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is,
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend. -Naomi Shihab Nye
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